Technology
Feds would be prohibited from using new bill for facial recognition
On Thursday Democrats tabled a new bill to prohibit the use of facial recognition technology by federal law enforcement and make it more difficult for state and local police to use technology.
The Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and D Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) of the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, launched on Thursday, would prohibit federal authorities using facial recognition and require similar policies to be adopted by state and local police departments to receive federal subsidies. The draft would effectively ban the use of tech till a law explicitly allowed by Congress would be passed.
"The technology of facial recognition does not simply pose a serious threat to our privacy; it endangers black people and other ethnic minorities in our country physically," said Sen. Markey. "We can't ignove the harms that these technologies have when we are working to dismantle the systems of racism that pervade every part of our society."
The law is in the midst of widespread protests against police violence and increasing controversy over systems of facial recognition. Boston voted on Wednesday to ban facial recognition in the town and become the world's second largest municipality. On Wednesday, Boston City Council voted to ban the technology on the basis of a veto.
The use of technology in police cameras has been banished in California, New Hampshire, and Oakland and San Francisco by municipal agencies.
There are also new legal challenges to the technology. An administrative claim was lodged with the Detroit department of police earlier in this week by the American Civil Liberties Union in Michigan on the possible fact of the first misconduct involving facial identification technology in the USA.
In the ACLU complaint, Detroit law enforcement believed that, after a lead through facial recognition, a male called Robert Williams had stealed several watches from the local store in January.
In January, Williams was arrested outside her home and spent more than 30 hours outside Detroit at the detention centre.
The new bill is also intended directly to target one of the federal programs, known as the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Support Program, which spends millions of dollars on government , local law enforcement and correction programs in the whole country. According to the website of the program, the Byrne funding program provided state police services with $264 million last year.
The proposal would still be an enormous win for privacy advocates who have been urging caution in the use of biometric identification systems for years while Congress support is still silent.
Facial awareness is like nuclear weapons or biological weapons. It threatens the future of human society such that the inevital harm overwhelms all possible benefits, Evan Greer, Fight for the Future Deputy Director, stated in a statement on Thursday. "Not reforming or regulating this inherently oppressive technology. It ought to be suppressed.
